Biography of Thomas H. Short: Texas Ranger, Mexican War and Civil War Veteran (1831–1909)

Thomas H. Short, Texas Ranger, farmer, and Mexican War and Civil War veteran, was born on January 28, 1831, to John Short, a veteran of the battle of New Orleans, and Delphia Dicey (Stinson) Short in Dallas County, Alabama. John Short and his younger brother Michael left for Texas, arrived in early 1836, and joined the Revolutionary Army. Michael Short fought at the battle of San Jacinto. John Short, who had taken ill with measles and did not participate in the battle, later returned to Alabama and brought his family to Texas in 1838. The Short families settled in present-day Fayette County near La Grange, purchased land in 1842, and established themselves in agriculture, trade, and milling.

During the Mexican War, Thomas Short at age fifteen joined the Texas Rangers at La Grange on May 14, 1846, and was mustered into service for six months on June 6, 1846, at Point Isabel. He was a private in Company C, commanded by Capt. Thomas Green of the First Regiment of Texas Mounted Rifle Volunteers but furloughed in July 1846 on account of a surgeon’s certificate of disability. On May 24, 1847, Short joined Capt. Jacob Roberts’s Company F of Col. John Coffee Hays’s First Regiment, Texas Mounted Volunteers. In this company Short participated in actions at Matamoros, where family tradition held that he had his horse shot out from under him, and Galaxara Pass. The Rangers were mustered out of service at Vera Cruz, Mexico, on May 1, 1848.  

Short, still a teenager, returned to LaGrange as an orphan; his mother had died in 1846, and his father died in 1847. Influenced by his older brother John, Thomas Short joined a secret organization whose criminal activities included cattle and horse stealing, forging land patents, counterfeiting coin, and the stealing and selling of enslaved persons. While attempting to sell a stolen enslaved person in Natchez, Mississippi, Short was captured in July 1849. He was taken to Brenham, Texas, and jailed. Short published a lengthy confession in the August 25, 1849, edition of the Texas State Gazette, in which he detailed many of the criminal activities, implicated others in the group (that included his brother-in-law William Greenbury Sansom), and begged for mercy. His brother William was dead (reportedly hanged). Thomas Short was sentenced to two years in the newly-built Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. In the convict record William Sansom was registered as Prisoner No. 1, and Tom Short was Prisoner No. 3. Short was discharged in 1850. Sansom was pardoned by Governor Peter Hansborough Bell on September 14, 1850. Upon his release, Short returned to Alabama and was listed on the 1850 census in Baldwin County.

On December 5, 1854, Thomas Short married Margaret Elenor Overton, daughter of John Jesse and Sophia (Henry) Overton, in Baldwin County, Alabama. The Shorts welcomed nine children to their union. The family stayed in Alabama until 1860, when they moved to Texas and settled in Blanco County (the region that became Kendall County in 1862). By July 1860 Short was listed on the agriculture schedule on Curry’s Creek.

During the Civil War Thomas Short enlisted as a private in Blanco County in February 1862 into Capt. Charles de Montel’s Ranger Company G, Frontier Regiment, commanded by Col. J. M. Norris. He served until June 30, 1862. He then reenlisted on December 29, 1862, in Capt. John W. Lawhon’s Company B, Mounted Frontier Regiment of Col. James E. McCord, who commanded the Texas State Troops at Camp Verde. After the company reorganized for transfer from state service to Confederate service, Short deserted on January 20, 1864. Justifying his desertion, he stated, “I did not swallow it [the Confederate oath] very far down, so it was no trouble to spit up.” On February 8, 1864, Thomas enlisted in Company C, First Texas Cavalry, in the Union Army. He mustered out on October 31, 1865. As was the case for many families whose members fought on opposing sides, his brother, Alphonso, had served in the Confederate Army, but they did not remain enemies and were neighbors in Kendall County in 1870.

On August 12, 1867, Thomas Short’s voting rights were reinstated during Reconstruction. At that time, his residence was listed in Kendall County. Family tradition holds that Short had some close calls with Comanches who raided in the vicinity of Curry's Creek. On the 1870 census, he was listed as a thirty-nine-year-old farmer in Kendall County, Spring Branch Post Office. On July 28, 1871, Short was appointed postmaster at Curry’s Creek, and he served through most of 1872. He enlisted as a private in J. Nowlin’s Company C of the Kendall County Minute Men on February 4, 1872. Records show that he served a total of fifteen days, though his discharge date was listed as March 1, 1874.

Thomas Short and his family farmed on Curry’s Creek in Kendall County during the 1880 U.S. census. Their operation included 170 acres in brush and fifty acres of improved and tilled land. Livestock included horses, mules, oxen, dairy and beef cattle, as well as swine and poultry, and they produced corn, oats, and wheat. On July 18, 1890, Thomas Short filed a Civil War invalid pension and was listed on the Texas veteran schedule.

Tom and Margaret Short moved to New Mexico Territory in the early 1890s. During these years, they continued to run a ranch and were active in the lumber business near Cloudcroft before moving to Alamogordo by 1900. In 1909 he went to Carrizozo, New Mexico, to visit his daughter, Mary Ophelia, and her husband Isaac Cavender, who worked for the railroad there. A few weeks into his visit, Short fell ill, and on February 23, 1909, Thomas H. Short, at seventy-eight years old, died in Carrizozo. He was buried there in Evergreen Cemetery. He was survived by his wife and five children. On April 2, 1909, Thomas Short’s widow filed for a pension because of her husband’s Civil War service. An old military grave marker marks Short's gravesite. In 1987 Short’s descendants erected a Veteran’s Affairs gravestone that acknowledged his military service during the Mexican War and the Civil War.